Cascading Reels, Sticky Wilds, and More: Slot Features Explained
Today’s online slots are almost unrecognizable compared to their early predecessors. Although the classics remain, the dawn of video slots has taken the humble game format and helped it evolve into something that offers more entertainment, thrills, and features than ever before.
As the various slot game developers in the industry attempt to claim market share, they innovate and develop unique features that make their games stand out. This results in more features for gamblers to enjoy and more entertaining games becoming available.
If you’re new to gambling or feeling overwhelmed by modern slot games, our simple guide breaks down the key features that can enhance your gaming experience and make it even more enjoyable.
Cascading Reels
Also called tumbling or avalanche reels, cascading reels are an increasingly popular feature found in many of the best slot titles. Cascading reels add excitement to each spin while significantly increasing your potential winnings on each wager.
Triggered when you achieve a win on a spin, the feature works by replacing all symbols involved in the win with new, random options. If fortune is on your side, these may trigger another win, which can create a chain reaction of wins until your lucky streak runs out.
This process is often accompanied by vivid animations and graphics that show the winning symbols falling, breaking, or tumbling off-screen to be replaced by new ones. Visuals aside, this feature can lead to impressive boosts to your winnings because most games don’t limit how many times reels can cascade.
Sticky Wilds
Sticky wilds are one of the most sought-after features for maximizing winnings. Sticky wilds interact with a game’s wild symbol—the symbol that can act as any other symbol except for the scatter or bonus.
When you activate a sticky wild feature, each wild that appears in a spin remains in place as the non-wild symbols spin again and are replaced by new options. Should more wilds again appear, these will join the original ones and stick in place or become “sticky.” As more wilds appear on screen, the chances of a bigger win increase significantly.
Despite its popularity, this feature has one significant drawback. Many slot games limit the number of times a respin can occur while sticky wilds are active. Should you not get any high-paying symbols (or additional wilds) during these spins, your chances of winning a decent prize will be pretty slim.
Expanding Reels
Another popular feature of many modern slots is expanding reels. Like sticky wilds, this feature can lead to significant wins as it can result in a large proportion of your reels becoming the same symbol, leading to some truly exciting wins.
Expanding reels are often linked to a particular symbol, most commonly wilds. The feature causes a specific symbol to extend vertically on a reel, replacing all other symbols. This occurs whenever the expanding symbols fall on a reel and cause all the symbols on that reel to become that symbol.
When expanding reels are applied to wilds (usually called expanding wilds), you stand a good chance of a decent win because of how wilds can substitute for other symbols. The one downside of this feature is that lower-paying variants may sometimes replace higher-paying symbols if the lower-paying option is an expanding symbol.
Megaways
Developed by Australian firm Big Time Gaming, Megaways is a feature that appears in numerous great slot games. The Megaways mechanic randomly changes the number of symbols on each reel each time you spin, creating a different layout each time and leading to more suspenseful gameplay.
Though the constantly changing layout and shifting number of reels may initially seem confusing, some spins can boast over 100,000 ways to win—making this an incredibly popular feature.
In addition, Megaways slots are commonly paired with other incredible features, such as cascading reels, resulting in fantastic odds of winning and constantly changing gameplay that never gets stale.
Bonus Games
First appearing in a slot released by WMS in 1996, bonus games have become a staple in modern slots. Most often triggered by landing three or more of a specific symbol (called a scatter), these games grant access to unique mini-games, free spins, or multipliers—all of which can help you win bigger and better prizes.
Free spin bonus games, the most popular and common, provide a set number of spins during which you aren’t deducted any wager amounts but can keep all your winnings. These spins also often come with other features like additional wilds added to the reels or multipliers that increase even small winnings.
Pick-and-click bonus games also exist and take the form of mini-games separate from the main slot. These often require you to select a symbol or option and click on it, with the outcome randomized between something that will take you to another level, grant generous rewards, or end the bonus game.
Bonus Buys
Increasingly common in new slots, bonus buys are an option that allows you to spend a specific number of credits to trigger the bonus game automatically. This feature will enable you to reap the benefits of a bonus round without waiting to land three (or more) scatter symbols to trigger it.
While this feature provides immediate access to bonuses, remember that wins are not guaranteed in every bonus round. Therefore, if the price of a bonus buy is high, it may be better to play until it is triggered rather than opting to buy it.
Progressive Jackpots
Any slot game, such as Mega Moolah, that links all gaming sessions to a combined jackpot is classified as a progressive jackpot slot. This feature is prevalent in games with lower RTP (return to player) rates, but it more than makes up for it by offering jaw-dropping jackpot amounts.
A unique feature of these slots is that a certain percentage of every wager is added to the prize pot from every active gaming session. This means that if $0.10 is added for every spin and 20 players are actively playing, $2 will be added to the prize pot every time each player spins.